The Cross in the Closet Read Online Free Page B

wait for the backlash.
    I never anticipated that coming out as gay would feel this raw, this emotional, this terrifying. It isn’t a fear that life won’t go on; rather, that life won’t resolve in some way. The questions and the stereotypes, and fear for all of the relationships I might lose, consume me. I don’t want to lose my friends, and I don’t want my family to hold me at arm’s length. I do not want to be the black sheep of the family, or the
different
gay brother or son. I want to be me. But having been raised in a conservative religious home, I know these hopes aren’t reasonable. Living in the culture of the “Bible Belt” makes the prospect of feeling simultaneously normal and gay likely impossible. I cannot imagine what coming out would be like if I were really gay. One year may seem like a long time, but a lifetime…That would be more than I could ever adjust to.
    The look on my brother’s face as he processes my revelation is proof. Nothing about this year is going to be easy.
    Then my brother’s wife, Maren, looks at me with the grace of a sister, and Andrew’s face takes on a beautiful look of sympathy and protectiveness. I don’t know why he’s looking at me that way, but it is not threatening. I have never seen it before, and it surprises me, knowing what he must be thinking. Then I feel guilt; not just because I’m intentionally allowing him to go through this with me, but because I am selfish. I am selfish because I treasure that look on his face and what it shows me—I really am important to him. In some indescribable way, I feel that he actually needs me.
    Is he afraid of losing me? Why that look?
    Why now?
    For the moment my nerves calm and my fear abates. My sister-in-law moves next to me and playfully grabs the scruff of my neck. “Were you actually afraid we were going to push you away for being gay?” she asks as her hand rubs my still very rigid back. I can feel my pulse. It hasn’t stopped racing since I told Andrew and Maren that we needed to talk.
    “Honestly, I didn’t know how you were going to react,” I reply, still shaking.
    Andrew moves next to me and puts his arm around me. I’m in the middle of these two people, and I feel like I hardly know them. Have I been too hard on them, assuming that my brother would react to my coming out the way I might have if he had come out to me? I don’t know what to think. Surprisingly, neither of them asks questions. I have been told most family members ask questions after finding out for the first time that a loved one is gay. But they do not ask me how long I have known or “felt this way,” and they do not ask me if I have a boyfriend. Instead, they just let me be. It is a beautiful thing that in spite of everything I believed would, or at least could, have happened, in our case, blood really does run thicker than dogma.
    I hear the sliding doors to the porch open. The sound is a salvation of sorts, as I am ready to go outside and smoke a cigarette. The group of friends walk into the kitchen and immediately engage my brother and his wife in conversation. I slip quietly out to the porch.
    It is cold, too cold for anyone without a jacket. I am without mine but unwilling to go back inside without taking a few minutes to myself. I put the cigarette in my mouth and reach for my lighter, but something comes over me before I can light it. I feel physically sick, like I am neck-deep in a pit of quicksand, like I have just committed a murder and am waiting to be found out. My worry turns into nausea, and my nausea becomes a forward movement to the screen door, which I wrench open just in time to vomit into the bushes. My nerves manifest themselves into a bought of physical sickness.
    And then I see him, the Pharisee, standing at the bottom of the steps with a disapproving look on his face.
    Why are you lying to them? We both know you can’t maintain this lie.
    Leave me alone.
    I just don’t understand why you think lying to your